Pubdate: Mon, 16 Jun 2014
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2014 Associated Press
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Kristen Wyatt, Associated Press
Page: A3

POT LAWS TANGLE CHILD-WELFARE CASES

Pro-Marijuana Activists Counsel Parents on How to Deal With Police

Denver (AP) - A Colorado man loses custody of his children after 
getting a medical marijuana card. The daughter of a Michigan couple 
growing legal medicinal pot is taken by child-protection authorities 
after an ex-husband says their plants endangered kids.

And police officers in New Jersey visit a home after a 9-year-old 
mentions his mother's hemp advocacy at school.

While the cases were eventually decided in favor of the parents, the 
incidents underscore a growing dilemma: While a pot plant in the 
basement may not bring criminal charges in many states, the same 
plant can become a piece of evidence in child custody or abuse cases.

"The legal standard is always the best interest of the children, and 
you can imagine how subjective that can get," said Jess Cochrane, who 
helped found the Boston-based Family Law & Cannabis Alliance after 
finding that child-abuse laws have been slow to catch up with pot policy.

No data exists to show how often pot use comes up in custody 
disputes, or how often child-welfare workers intervene in homes where 
marijuana is used.

But in dozens of interviews with lawyers and officials who work in 
this area, the consensus is clear: Pot's growing acceptance is 
complicating the task of determining when kids are in danger.

A failed proposal in the Colorado legislature illustrated the quandary.

Colorado considers adult marijuana use legal, but pot still is 
treated like heroin and other Schedule I substances as they are 
listed under federal law. When it comes to defining a drug-endangered 
child, pot can't legally be in a home where children live.

Two Democratic lawmakers tried to update the law by saying that 
marijuana also must be shown to be a harm or risk to children to 
constitute abuse.

But the effort led to angry opposition from both sides - pot-using 
parents who feared the law could still be used to take their 
children, and opponents of marijuana legalization who argued that pot 
remains illegal under federal law and that its very presence in a 
home threatens kids.

After hours of emotional testimony, lawmakers abandoned the effort as 
too complicated. Among the teary-eyed moms at the hearing was Moriah 
Barnhart, who moved to the Denver area from Tampa in search of a 
cannabis based treatment for a daughter with brain cancer.

"We moved here across the country so we wouldn't be criminals," 
Barnhart said. "But all it takes is one neighbor not approving of 
what we're doing, one police officer who doesn't understand, and the 
law says I'm a child abuser."

Supporters vow to try again to give law enforcement some definitions 
about when the presence of drugs could harm children, even if the 
kids don't use it.

"There are people who are very reckless with what they're doing. Too 
often with law enforcement, they're just looking at the legality of 
the behavior," said Jim Gerhardt of the Colorado Drug Investigators 
Association, which supported the bill.

Colorado courts are wading into the question of when adult pot use 
endangers kids. The state Court of Appeals in 2010 sided with a 
marijuana-using dad who lost visitation rights though he never used 
the drug around his daughter.

The court reversed a county court's decision that the father couldn't 
have unsupervised visitation until passing a drug test, saying that a 
parent's marijuana use when away from his or her children doesn't 
suggest any risk of child harm.

But child-endangerment standards remain murky in Colorado, with wide 
disparities in how local child-protection officers and law 
enforcement investigators approach pot, said Rob Corry, a Denver 
lawyer who successfully argued the father's custody appeal.

Corry, who helped Colorado's 2012 campaign to legalize recreational 
marijuana, said the main thrust of the effort was to treat pot like alcohol.

"Think of brewing beer," he said. "Marijuana should be just as simple 
- - you just keep it on a high shelf, right next to your vodka."

In the absence of legal guidelines, a growing network of blogs 
counsel parents on how to deal with police or child-protection 
agencies concerned about parental marijuana use, including one run by 
legal-pot activist Diane Fornbacher.

She said she moved to Colorado this year after child-protection 
workers visited her family in New Jersey after a teacher alerted 
officials when her son mentioned hemp - pot's non-hallucinogenic 
cousin - at school.

"They said, 'We're just here to help.' Emotionally, my brain was 
like: 'My kids! My kids!' " she said.

The need for better standards about when marijuana endangers kids is 
growing by the day, said Maria Green, a Lansing, Mich., mother who 
lost custody of her infant daughter for three months last year.

Green grows pot to treat her husband's epilepsy, and though 
Michigan's medical marijuana law states parents shall not be denied 
custody or visitation with a child for following the statute, a legal 
dispute with her ex-husband led to her daughter being placed with a 
grandparent until it was resolved.

The ex-husband who brought the complaint declined an interview until 
talking with his attorney.

"I never in a million years thought that they were going to take my 
daughter," Green said. "I know that there's a place for child 
protection, but I would love to see it used to protect kids from 
being actually hurt."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom